How Smart Technology Contributes to Healthier Eating

Smart kitchen devices and food tracking apps can help you replace unhealthy food with nutritious meals with ease.

Are you navigating the fine line between loving food and trying to eat healthily? Do you wish there was a way your technology addiction could assist in helping you eat better?

From smart kitchen gadgets to wearables that remind you of your nutrition and diet goals, healthier eating could be a few taps, swipes, or clicks away. Smart devices aren't just for memes and cat videos; they can also be a powerful ally in transforming your home and your kitchen into a haven of nutrition.

Outfitting your cooking space with smart kitchen gadgets can turn meal prep from a guessing game into a precise science. Consider the humble refrigerator—it's no longer just an over-sized white or silver box humming in the corner of your kitchen.

The Samsung Family Hub smart refrigerator comes equipped with Wi-Fi and lets you see inside your fridge while you're away from home, search recipes based on the ingredients you have, plan weekly meals, and send cooking instructions to other smart devices, such as the Samsung smart oven.

It's like having a personal kitchen assistant, helping you plan your meals better and ensuring you have a fridge full of healthy ingredients.

In terms of how you cook your food, boiling, broiling, and baking are so last decade. Many restaurants and homes have adopted sous vide cooking.

For example, the Anova Sous Vide Cooker is a Bluetooth-enabled device that brings restaurant-style precision cooking right into your home. Sous vide cooking involves sealing food in a bag and cooking it in water at a precise temperature. This means your steak, fish, or veggies are cooked evenly and retain their nutrients, resulting in healthier, tastier meals.

But the gadgetry doesn't stop there. Imagine you're cooking up your favorite recipe and the instructions tell you to add a cup of quinoa. But what's the nutritional value of that quinoa?

Enter the GreaterGoods Nutrition Facts Digital Scale. This scale displays nutritional information for the food you're weighing. The touch of a button can show you calories, protein, fats, carbohydrates, and more. It's like having a nutritionist on your countertop, guiding you through every meal.

The internet is brimming with resources to elevate your nutrition IQ and help you make better food choices. Let's start with a favorite choice of many: Coursera. This platform offers online courses from top universities around the world, and they've got an impressive lineup when it comes to nutrition.

A great place to start is the Stanford Introduction to Food and Health course. In a few hours, you'll be decoding nutrition labels like a pro and impressing your friends with your newfound knowledge of macros and micros.

But if academia isn't quite your vibe, don't sweat it. There's a sea of more casual yet equally informative resources out there. Consider NutritionFacts.org and its YouTube channel, which is chock-full of digestible (pun intended) videos on all things nutrition.

From a YouTube video on the best diets for healthy aging to a video on how fasting affects your health, this channel has got you covered.

Podcasts more your speed? Meet the Nutrition Diva, your new audio guide to healthy eating. Monica Reinagel, the host, breaks down complex nutrition science into bite-sized, easy-to-understand episodes. Whether you're commuting, working out, or cooking dinner, the Nutrition Diva can be your nutritionist companion, transforming your diet one podcast at a time.

While smart kitchen gadgets and online resources can go a long way in boosting your nutrition journey, wearable tech, like fitness trackers, add that extra layer of personal accountability, ensuring you stick to your goals.

Take the Fitbit Charge 5, for example. Not only does it keep track of your steps and sleep, but it also comes equipped with the ability to track your food intake using the Fitbit app. This allows you to break down your calories into proteins, fats, and carbs. Over time, you can see trends in your eating habits and make changes as needed.

By syncing your nutrition data with your physical activity, the Fitbit Charge 5 gives you a holistic view of your health journey.

So, you've got your smart kitchen gadgets, learned about nutrition, and strapped on your Fitbit. Now, it's time for the next step in your tech-assisted healthy eating journey: smart grocery shopping.

You're probably familiar with Amazon, but have you tried Amazon Fresh? This online grocery service can help you make healthier choices without even setting foot in a supermarket. How, you ask?

Each product comes with a detailed nutrition profile, so you know exactly what you're buying. Plus, the temptation to wander down the candy aisle is gone when you're clicking through the produce section from the comfort of your couch.

But what if you want to kick it up a notch? Hello Fresh is a meal delivery service that sends you fresh, pre-portioned ingredients along with step-by-step recipes. It's like getting a nutritionist, personal chef, and grocery shopper all in one box.

With menu options that cater to various dietary needs (think vegetarian, low-calorie, or family-friendly), Hello Fresh allows you to take control of what you eat without the stress of meal planning and shopping. Plus, no more excuses for ordering takeout because you forgot to buy groceries.

Meal planning software is like a personal nutrition planner living on your computer or smartphone, ready to offer healthy meal options at your request. For example, Eat This Much creates personalized meal plans based on your diet goals, food preferences, and allergy restrictions.

Whether you're a keto-enthusiast, vegetarian, or just someone trying to cut down on sugar, Eat This Much has you covered.

It also helps manage your grocery list by providing exactly what you need for each meal, saving you from aimlessly wandering the grocery aisles. Imagine walking into a store knowing you're buying precisely what you need for a week's worth of healthy meals. Sounds like a dream, right?

There are plenty of additional food apps that make healthy eating easy as well as food ingredient apps that you can use to decode those cryptic nutrition labels. And if Eat This Much isn't to your liking, you can do all your meal-planning on your smartphone with one of these meal-planning apps.

Technology gives you an extraordinary opportunity to take charge of your nutritional health, and it's exciting to see where this journey can take you. Here's to a world where late-night pizza orders are replaced with well-balanced, home-cooked meals, and where your wearable tech celebrates your achievements, not just counts your steps.

Remember, in the end, it's not just about eating healthy—it's about feeling good about your choices, understanding your body, and yes, occasionally treating yourself to a delicious chocolate brownie. After all, life is about balance, right?

Sean is a long-time tech-enthusiast and early adopter who enjoys keeping up with the latest technological advances. He focuses on exploring how tech such as wearables and AI are impacting people's health and wellbeing. He has a master's degree and, before writing for MakeUseOf, spent time as a technology instructor. He's been writing about technology for over 10 years. When he's not at his standing desk, you’ll find him on the volleyball court or on a mountain.